Collecting, thinking, sketching

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Monthly Archives: October 2014

Jochen Gerz is for me one of the most interesting artist working with public space. I especially like his work “The Square of the Invisible Monument”, for the way it was conducted and dealing with memory and the invisible. This artwork was done with a group of students, during the night, without the authority knowing about the actions happening right in front of them. The stones of the square was replaced with stones with engraving of the names of Jewish cemeteries in the area. This was done illegal at night.

Based in Rotterdam, Jeanne van Heeswijk is a visual artist who creates situations in public places to provoke interactions between members of the public. These provocations include talking to trees, arranging fashion marches and baking bread, but all are aimed at setting up opportunities for new encounters and dialogue – in a way is finely tuned to the subtlety of needs, desires and ambitions of a local people and place. Her webpage: http://www.jeanneworks.net

This foundation is lead by Malkit Shoshan, a critical Israeli architect based in Amsterdam. They are doing an extensive research, making publications and exhibition raising critical issues regarding urbanism, territories, conflicts.

Under are some photos from Drones and Honeycombs, discussing the use of drones with the public realm inviting different persons and institutions into the discussion.

A project runner by the Spanish Ecosistema Urbana in cooperation with BAS (Bergen School of Architecture) who won a competition by Hamar municipality in Norway to revitalize the central square of the city.

Dreamhamar is a participation and network design process aimed to redesign the public space of Stortorget Square in Hamar, Norway. During 2011-2012, citizens are taking part in a collective brainstorming process that will define their new square. It’s a pioneer approach to the construction of new public spaces or transformation of existing ones, supported by workshops, lectures, urban actions, communication and participation tools.The project involves various stakeholders that become part of the community of Dreamhamar and participate in some of the seven working areas which are currently developed:

URBAN DESIGN, a technical research and urban approach to the public space.
PHYSICAL LAB, a “pop up office” where workshops, lectures and exhibitions take place.
ONSITE WORKSHOPS, workshops and lectures led by local and international creative guests to create a large database of the citizen ideas.
URBAN ACTIONS, a way for citizens to experience directly on the public space possible uses of the future square. Mock ups scale 1/1
DIGITAL LAB, participatory web platform linked to social network channels, to follow the weekly broadcasts, online workshops and use the mobile application, dreamhamar.app.
ACADEMIC NETWORK, Dreamhamar as the course case study for universities linked to this global participative brainstorming.
CULTURAL RUCKSACK, students from local schools share their ideas for Stortorget.

“The right to the city is far more than the individual liberty to access urban resources: it is a right to change ourselves by changing the city. It is, more­over, a common rather than an individual right since this transformation inevitably depends upon the exercise of a collec­tive power to reshape the proces­ses of urban­ization. The freedom to make and remake our cities and ourselves is, I want to argue, one of the most precious yet most neglected of our human rights.”
—The Right to the City, David Harvey

Lured by the thrill of the unknown and the beauty of maps, 38 artists create their own maps that bear the imprint of personal histories as well as actual sites. Ranging from the celestial and the terrestrial to the subatomic, the works explore such themes as borders, identity, and travel—both real and imagined, while charting fresh ways of locating our place in a world in flux.